Zero Install is one of the more promising alternatives to native package systems for Linux distributions, such as RPM and Debian's dpkg.
Originally developed by Thomas Leonard, a professor in the Department of Electronics and Computing at the University of Southampton, it begins with a criticism of existing package systems the difficulties of using them, and is built to provide an answer to the problems raised by the critique. However, like other alternative package systems, it faces the problems of winning acceptance from the major distributions and fine-tuning its features.